What’s Included

WHAT INFORMATION IS INCLUDED IN YOUR PLANS?

A couple of things to know before going down the list of what our plans provide. Of the many differences between the “stock” plans you’ve seen on other sites, and the complete working drawings for one-of-a-kind homes we offer, is the amount of content and detail provided. For a detailed explanation of the many differences between our plans and “stock” plans, please click here

All house plans, including “stock” plans, provide basic information like floor plans, foundation plans, elevations, typical wall sections, and electrical plans. But within those categories there can be a huge difference in the amount of information provided. An excellent example of this is shown below regarding elevation drawings.

And other categories of information might not be provided in “stock” plans, like whole house cross-sections, framing and structural information for each level and the roof, individual detail drawings providing close-up illustrations and instructions, and window and door schedules.

At a minimum, each of our plan sets includes the following:

Fully detailed and dimensioned floor plans for each level

Foundation plan and foundation detail drawings

Whole house cross-section(s)

Detailed elevations of all four sides of the house

Typical wall sections and details

Framing details for each level

Roof framing details

Schematic electrical drawings for each level

Individual construction and foundation detail drawings

General construction notes and specifications

Many sets also include:

Window and door schedules

Interior elevations

Stair and fireplace details

If you would like to know the exact contents of a particular set of plans, please give us a call at 888-388-5735 between 10 and 6 Pacific (West Coast) Time.

They range in size of sheets – 18″x24″; 24″x36″; and 30″x42″ – as well as in number of sheets – from as few as 5 to more than 25! However, keep in mind that when it comes to the amount of detail (information) provided, the size and number of pages can be deceiving. For instance, a 6-page set of plans can sometimes include much more information than a 12-page set. The former may have all 4 elevation drawings on one sheet, and the floor plans for each level on another (along with some detail drawings, schedules, electrical schematic, and construction notes), while the latter may have one elevation drawing on each of four separate sheets, and the same for each floor plan.

However, just stating that our (or someone else’s) plans include, let’s say, elevation drawings, doesn’t tell you much. All plan sets include what are referred to as “elevations”. But these drawings might simply show the outlines of the house, the rooflines, and the positions and shapes of the doors and windows. A more complete drawing will include references to specific external materials, to door, window and finish schedules, and possibly to house cross sections. They may also include labeled reference lines showing the builder where things like the subfloors and tops of plates are, relative to the outside structure, and the distances between them. And in some cases, they can even include individual detail drawings.

Let’s use elevation drawings as an example of how different they can be in different sets of drawings. The elevation drawings might simply show the outlines of the house, the rooflines, and the positions and shapes of the doors and windows. A more complete drawing will include references to external materials, to door, window and finish schedules, as well as references to detailed drawing on other sheets of the plans. They may also include labeled reference lines showing the builder where things like the subfloors and tops of plates are, relative to the outside structure, and the distances between them. And in some cases, they can even include individual detail drawings.

To illustrate this point, this is one of the elevation sheets from our plans for Maple Forest 2:

So you can see that’s it’s not enough to simply list the contents of the plans for you to know how much information is actually being provided to your builder.

One more thing to consider:

The architects we work with are typically paid around 10-12% of the total cost to build the house. So if the house cost around $250,000 to construct, the architect would have been paid between twenty-five and thirty thousand dollars. And the back-and-forth process probably took at least 8 months.

However, the exact same set of plans is available on our site for between $1,250 and $1,500, which works out to a savings of 95% off the original cost, and we can mail or email your plans within 24 hours!

We highly recommend that you click on two boxes – the number of bedrooms you know you need, and one less bedroom. For example, if you need 4 bedrooms, click on the boxes next to 4 and next to 3. Otherwise you will not see homes where existing rooms on the lower, main, or upper levels might work perfectly well as a bedroom instead of as an office, study, etc.